Light guards have been used for many years to house a lamp, such as an incandescent light bulb, connected to an electric power source through a socket often carried by the lamp guard itself. As such, the light guard may be mounted over building exits and the like. The light guard may also be made portable by connecting the lamp to an extension cord in order to carry the lamp to poorly lit areas. These light guards are often termed trouble lamps and are commonly employed by mechanics and other workers who require a concentration of light in a frequently changing location. Usually the light guard has two sections which may be separated from each other to replace a burned-out lamp, clean the guard, or for still other purposes.
In general, the sections comprise a reflector or shield section and a cage section. As a rule, the reflector section partially encircles the lamp and provides a reflective surface while also serving as a shield for the eyes of a user when it is placed between him and an object being illuminated. The cage section is relatively open so as to pass the light from the lamp with minimum interference.
It has been the practice to fabricate the light guard entirely from metal. The cage section, for example, often comprises a simple wire cage structure. While light guards of metal can withstand substantial heat created by the lamps, they are considered by some a safety hazard due to their electrical conductivity and the resulting possibility of electrical shocks or burns to a user. To meet certain safety standards, metal light guards may have to be grounded to reduce the possibility of shock hazard. In more recent years, the trend has been to mold the sections of a light guard from electrically non-conducting synthetic resins. Such resins are less expensive than metal, and plastic light guards substantially reduce the likelihood of electrical shocks and heat burns.
Whether fabricated from metal or snythetic plastics, light guards desirably are constructed to avoid easy unlatching which would augment the hazards of electrical shocks and heat burns from the lamp. Construction designed to avoid easy unlatching includes not only structure specifically designed for locking and unlocking the reflector and cage sections with respect to each other, but also structure designed for pivoting or other relative movement between the sections. However, if a light guard is designed to avoid accidental or inadvertent easy opening or detachment, it often results that the guard is also difficult to open manually when it is desired to unlatch or otherwise separate the reflector and cage sections from each other.